Your flights are booked. You’ve flipped through the program
book a few times. You think you’re ready for AAR/SBL. Oh, sweet fool, you’re adorable! Of course you know that nobody is ready. Not
really
ready. How can one adequately prepare for this conference when one cannot
predict the elements? I’m not talking
about the weather; I’m talking about the constituent parts of the grand social
experiment. In order to really prepare
you must know who you’ll meet in the wild.
Even so, the behavioral patterns of these rare birds have baffled scientists
for over a century.
[revised using reader suggestions]
The Gladiator
You are a beautiful, but deadly beast. You anxiously await
each annual meeting to demonstrate your prowess in theological
Thunderdome. You must defeat every opponent and emerge victorious in both
of your presentations (you feel that if you’re not presenting in at least two
sessions, you’re not even trying). Worse, you must “win” every
conversation. This might mean exposing an evangelical bias or getting a
hearty laugh from a senior colleague. You replay conversations in your
head and wonder whether you might have sounded wittier if you had better timing
or better voice inflection. Sadly, you very rarely know when the fight is
over. You are looking for the thrill of just one more contest.
The Vacationeer
You are a professional with “study leave” or a “professional
advancement” budget. You shuffle around the book room for hours on
end. You might take in a paper here or there, but you’d be just as happy
to see a film. If there is a museum or a historic landmark nearby, you
might get up early and catch a bus. On the rare occasion that you present a paper, you will shrug off questions from the audience. You’ve used the
line, “That is a good point. I’ll have to think on that more.” Translation:
“I’m on vacation. These are the fewest number of words that I can possibly say
to you before I never think about you again.” You would just as soon discuss
the quality of the hotel service or the crêpes you had for breakfast.
The Greenhorn
You are attending your first to third annual meeting(s) or
have not been to a meeting for ten years or more. You might be a student
who is feeding your dreams of tweed-jacket paradise. You might have thought
wistfully, “Maybe I’ll see James Charlesworth! Maybe he will invite me for a
sauna and a robust discussion about the Testament of Solomon! He’ll be
impressed that I’ve read the entire Pseudepigrapha and will invite me to do a
PhD at Princeton Theological Seminary!” You will be awed by the sheer
magnitude of the book room. You simply cannot stop yourself from purchasing
twenty or more books. The ideas are simply too exciting and the mark down is
almost as good as amazon. You have highlighted the sessions that feature the
“big names.” You will be disappointed to learn that most of these big names are
Gladiators or Vacationeers.
The Observer
You have been around the conference world for millennia. You
walk among academics unseen and only rarely tinker with their particular
space-time continuum. You’ve seen Dom Crossan come and go. You saw
the great Bart Ehrman / Dale Martin debate. You witnessed the John
Barclay / Bob Jewett / Tom Wright extravaganza. You’ve seen
exhibitionists present in the LXX session, identical twins tag-team a presentation,
and have tripped over drunken Sheffield professors passed out in the grand
ballroom. You are surprised by nothing. You walk the Earth like Caine in
Kung Fu… walk from place to place, meet people, get into adventures.
The Artisan
You would much prefer to be isolated behind the comfort of a
computer screen or an office. The conference is a necessary trip to the
market. You must showcase your wares and drum up new contacts. You might
be a publisher or a bookseller. This will be your ninth conference of the year,
but the last and biggest. You are tired of pretending that every new book
proposal is a stroke of genius that will most certainly find a home with a good
press. You might be a writer who needs to promote a book or test out an idea.
In either case, the annual conference is like taking medicine. You have
to do it just to check “due diligence” off the list; attending is just part of your job description.
The Resident Tourist
You do not attend the annual conference on a regular
basis. You happen to reside nearby the city of choice this year. You
decided to attend because you don’t have to travel far to see the freak
show. You might be a pastor, priest, rabbi, or an interested lay person.
You once saw [insert seminary professors name here] at a youth convention and
you’re hoping to see what s/he has to say to these misguided Tower of Babel
builders. You are quite shocked to learn that almost nobody present has heard
of Francis Chan.
The Reunionist
You are one of the lucky souls who found babysitting for
three glorious nights! You might not approve of how your mother-in-law cares
for the kids, but you desperately need a few days of not managing someone
else’s nasal mucus. You are going to pretend like you’re a grad-student again
and celebrate this fantasy with others who enjoy the delusion. You’ll live
through the seventh telling of that “funny story that happened back then”
because it is worth it to see your friend laugh at her own story… again. You
research restaurants and breweries weeks ahead of time to ensure that your
reunions will have the appropriate ambiance. You’re not going to let committee
meetings or academic panels ruin your fun. You’ve heard of a microbrew that
must – MUST! – be sampled and discussed.
The Zombie
You thought that attending the annual conference was a good
idea four months ago. You now, for the life of you, cannot remember what the
hell you were thinking. You might have traveled across two or more time zones
to present a paper that remains unfinished. You promised yourself that you’d
finish it on the plane… but the in-flight movie was really just too horrible to
look away. You shuffle from room to room looking for the one session you care
about only to find that you’re in the wrong building. You will get stopped in
the hotel lobby by a colleague who wants to tell you about a paradigm-shifting
thesis. All you hear is, “Blah blah James the Just blah blah blah corn industry
blah blah blah erotic poetry of the middle ages…” At some point you will have
to choose between occupying a room with your snoring roommate or sitting in a
crowded pub with three junior colleagues determined to detail the various ways
in which Babette Babich has been misappropriated.
This list is nowhere near comprehensive. What have I missed?
I thoroughly enjoyed participating in the Historical Jesus program unit session on social memory theory this past SBL alongside Rafael Rodriguez, Zeba Crook, and Paul Foster. It was no doubt lively, as Foster accused me of being thin-skinned and I accused him of publicly shining his halo. 
